Farm Blog, Summer 2017
June 21 - September 20
June
June is the hottest and driest month in the Santa Fe area. It rains very infrequently and everything planted must be watered regularly or it will not survive. This year it we only had one good rain and two little showers. The daytime temperatures were in the 90's most of the month. Everyone waits for the July monsoon rains! The two Mishirasu Asian pear trees and the Centennial crabapple had to be removed. Weekly watering of the others kept them alive, but none are thriving. The Granny Smith , Gala apple, and Braeburn apple all have some fruit, as well as the sour cherry, old Damson plum, old peach, Everfresh Angelys Anjou #7 pear, and Luscious pear although the trees do not look as good as they could had they had more water.
In the vegetable garden many of the tomato plants, peppers, eggplants, zuccini and yellow squash plants are beginning to grow with the heat and extra watering. None of the leafy greens survived the quail and the mice.
July
Monsoon started the second week of July. Monsoon rains come from the south instead of from the north or west. If we have a good season there will be rain around the area every evening until the end of August. Rains are beginning all around the state and some locally. However, not all fall on Eldorado Windy Farm! Water bill will be high!
August
Sure enough the July water bill was the higest ever at over 12,000 gal used! August though was a good month for monsoon. We had 13 days of some rainfall falling during every week. A good amount of Damson and Greengage plums were picked, but not as many as the year before. The Old peach tree however did the best ever enabling us to freeze many batches of peaches to use for preserves during the fall and winter. The vegetable garden did also did well with an abundance of little yellow and red tomatoes; yellow straight, crookneck and zuchinni squash; Japanese eggplant; and Shishito, mild yellow, jalapeno and serrano peppers.
September
On the 25th all of the vegetable plants were pulled from the garden. There were several good rains that kept the trees and the flower garden wet. With additional water from the house and the barrels everything was kept alive. The daytime temperatures were in the 60s and the nights in the 40s, so the heat was over for the year. The summer heat did get into the mid-90s which is unusually hot for us.
Many of the tree leaves are beginning to turn yellow and soon will become dormant. Most of the fruit trees did not produce fruit or if they did it was small or deformed. However, the ones that did produced a lot. Perhaps next year I should be on a stricter watering schedule. Those that did produce were the sour cherry, the old peach above the garden and and the old Damson plum in the flower garden.